I believe in simplicity, minimalism, and have an ardent willingness to push the bounds, envisioning the betterment of usable and practical solutions.

To quench my thirst of experiencing Linux, I started my journey way back in the year 2000 with RedHat 6. It was not a love at first sight and I had to reinstall Windows 2000 on my machine since I was too young to understand the concept of dual-boot! LiveCD was something I never knew in my dreams even! The very thought of messing up my windows installation while trying to get things fixed with Linux haunted me for days.

Things are very different today from what they were a decade ago. With the advent of LiveCDs, the perception for Linux has changed quite dramatically. What was one believed to be a geek’s operating system is now being used by school kids, doctors and grandpas too! One more valid reason for immense popularity of Ubuntu Linux is that it doesn’t need prior knowledge about *nix system and architecture to visit your favorite website. You can do it just by booting up your machine with a LiveCD. I’ve myself been an Ubuntu fanboy!

Though geeks prefer a distro which gives freedom and power to conceive what they’re actually trying to do and what’s happening within the operating system. However, there are people who want an operating system which is free and easy to install, configure and most importantly, use.

Keeping all these factors in mind, we would like to evangelize on of the best distro’s for newbies, advocating the following 5 reasons:

The ability to have a glimpse: With the support of LiveCD, a fanboy can actually have a good enough look into the distro if not a full experience. It gives a chance to visualize and build a thought for the distro, based on one’s preferences and use case.

Ease of installation and configuration: You need not be a master of terminal windows and an ace of shell commands/scripts to run a mighty Ubuntu on your machine. The latest release of the distro has a much faster and easier installation wizard. Installing Ubuntu through Windows using Wubi, or performing a single or dual boot installation is far more easier than it was in the past. You need not bother much about the partitioning act or the swap space to make a complete Ubuntu installation.

Out of the box support: The Ubuntu developers have done exceptionally great in making it an “out-of-the-box” Linux distro. The seamless support it offers for the third party devices like digital cameras, usb drives, wireless connectivity, the ability to use restricted device drivers (if you wish to), etc. is a so very different and appreciable for people with varying desires and skills.

Ease of upgrade: As times change, desires often grow symmetrically. This leads to periodic software and security upgrades. Owing to the use of apt-get package installer, the upgrade for the installed softwares is just a click away. One doesn’t need to do much apart from entering the root password of course. Even the upgrade to a newer release of Ubuntu is a cake walk, provided you have an Internet connection.

Community support: Having a good community backup can do wonders in spreading a word about a technology, application or an OS for that matter. There is absolutely no denial of the fact that Ubuntu users cherish a large community support. Be it development or support, Ubuntu outlives several other distros in this classification.

Having said so much is so little to help evangelize Ubuntu Linux. You need to give it a shot if you haven’t by now. Saying so doesn’t mean Ubuntu is the best Linux distro. But, it is definitely a Linux distro which created a wave-pool in the Linux ecosystem. and a must try for all noobs out there.

I came to similar results with some of the same criteria in a post on my blog:Which Linux?

I make some other points worth considering though.

Uncle B

Please donate your old boxes to a church-group or some needy student in these hard times! To comply with the law, and with Microsoft's leasing policy, you can now replace Microsoft OS with the free (download from the net) Ubuntu OS, which can be set to erase the hard drive of all traces of the illegal to give away Microsoft system, before donation! Now, explain to your lucky recipient that all the manuals they will ever need are available for free on the internet! Just ask for them in Google! OpenOffice, which is installed already is plenty adequate for homework assignments and with a little exploring, everything else can work well too! Happy commuting!

chri

I really enjoyed this post, especially the “examples in this post” portion which made it really easy chi flat iron for me to SEE what you were talking about without even having to leave the article. Thanks

Uncle B

Please donate your old boxes to a church-group or some needy student in these hard times! To comply with the law, and with Microsoft's leasing policy, you can now replace Microsoft OS with the free (download from the net) Ubuntu OS, which can be set to erase the hard drive of all traces of the illegal to give away Microsoft system, before donation! Now, explain to your lucky recipient that all the manuals they will ever need are available for free on the internet! Just ask for them in Google! OpenOffice, which is installed already is plenty adequate for homework assignments and with a little exploring, everything else can work well too! Happy commuting!

Yaro

"1. The ability to have a glimpse."

Not unique to Ubuntu. There's actualy better LiveCDs out there if you just need a LiveCD for a LiveCD's sake. Puppy? Knoppix?

"2. Ease of installation and configuration."

Which throws away one of the biggest strengths of most Linux installs: A fully-customized install. Ubuntu gives little real chances to customize your install/configuration at install-time. If so, I'd have always dropped Pulse Audio and reconfigured ALSA before restarting my computer, like I can with Arch.

"3. Out of the box support."

This is actually hardly a result of Canonical's efforts. It's because the Linux kernel itself can and frequently does carry with it many, many, *many,* *MANY,* *MAAAAAAANY* drivers, ether compiled in or installed as modules. Linux has driver support that far outclasses Windows. Note how the only people claiming Linux has bad hardware support are Windows users who never used Linux. Anyway, this is far upstream from Ubuntu and it's got nothing to do with Canonical's efforts.

"4. Ease of upgrade."

Leaves too much cruft, and frankly, it's nowhere near as reliable or speedy as a decent rolling release implementation. Arch gets new versions of software way more frequently than Ubuntu and won the #1 spot on Distrowatch, at least for a while, as the most up-to-date distro ever made. Ubuntu users have to wait 6 months to get the latest version of the Linux kernel, for example. Arch will be bringing me kernel 2.6.30 in a week, tops. Ubuntu? We'll maybe see 2.6.30 or 31 this October.

"5. Community support"

There are distros with better communities, actually. Arch (I cite it a lot.) has a much more responsive forum, and Linux Questions is just the best forum for Linux community support I know of. None of them have anything to do with Ubuntu.

Ubuntu is pretty much average, really. Just immensely popular.

chri

I really chi flat iron enjoyed this post, especially chi flat iron the “examples in this post” portion which made it really easy for me to SEE what you were talking about without even having to leave the article. Thanks

Yaro

"1. The ability to have a glimpse."

Not unique to Ubuntu. There's actualy better LiveCDs out there if you just need a LiveCD for a LiveCD's sake. Puppy? Knoppix?

"2. Ease of installation and configuration."

Which throws away one of the biggest strengths of most Linux installs: A fully-customized install. Ubuntu gives little real chances to customize your install/configuration at install-time. If so, I'd have always dropped Pulse Audio and reconfigured ALSA before restarting my computer, like I can with Arch.

"3. Out of the box support."

This is actually hardly a result of Canonical's efforts. It's because the Linux kernel itself can and frequently does carry with it many, many, *many,* *MANY,* *MAAAAAAANY* drivers, ether compiled in or installed as modules. Linux has driver support that far outclasses Windows. Note how the only people claiming Linux has bad hardware support are Windows users who never used Linux. Anyway, this is far upstream from Ubuntu and it's got nothing to do with Canonical's efforts.

"4. Ease of upgrade."

Leaves too much cruft, and frankly, it's nowhere near as reliable or speedy as a decent rolling release implementation. Arch gets new versions of software way more frequently than Ubuntu and won the #1 spot on Distrowatch, at least for a while, as the most up-to-date distro ever made. Ubuntu users have to wait 6 months to get the latest version of the Linux kernel, for example. Arch will be bringing me kernel 2.6.30 in a week, tops. Ubuntu? We'll maybe see 2.6.30 or 31 this October.

"5. Community support"

There are distros with better communities, actually. Arch (I cite it a lot.) has a much more responsive forum, and Linux Questions is just the best forum for Linux community support I know of. None of them have anything to do with Ubuntu.